We adults were all sitting in the living room having adult conversation when the boy walked up to the area but kinda hung back to the side. Our friends have a lovely large house with a fairly open floor plan and little furniture and the rest of the kids were playing some sort of complex game involving hiding from each other, slamming doors, and a bunch of nerf weaponry. This boy was acting kinda squirrelly, turning back around a few times yet returning to where we were. After about five minutes, he blurted out "I have a crush on one of the girls up there."
I knew in a nanosecond which girl he was talking about. This girl:
The one who's smart, and pretty, and funny, and can burp her ABCs and slap on a headlock with the best of the boys. The one who has to be coerced into actually using shampoo and soap when she showers. The one who doesn't mind bugs, getting dirty, who loves to go fishing and ride her bike, who shrieks in terror if a hairbrush gets within two feet of her head. That one.
Our friend, the father of the birthday boy whose party this was and the homeowner, started to get a little worked up, but he couldn't really get his thoughts out while the words rushed out of the boy's mouth "I don't know her name."
Little Man leaned over the railing overlooking the living room and said "It's Trout!" and started to get worked up to tease and I told him to stay out of it. Our friend continued to bluster a bit when BigDaddyFish looked up at the boy and said mildly "So tell her."
Our friend stopped mid sentence and looked back and forth between me and BDF and I chimed in "Yeah, tell her." I figured that would end that, because I figured no 12 year old boy would have the nerve to walk up to the girl he was crushing on and tell her that.
"Well, does she have a cell phone?" he asked.
"Nope, and she won't anytime soon, either," I answered. BDF encouraged the boy to go tell her, and he wandered off. I think our friend thought we were nuts.
Trout told me later that he asked her if she had heard the conversation. She had, so he didn't need to tell her.
We let her exchange phone numbers with him - our landline, so we're supervising at all times. So far, he's called once to ask us to let him know when we are going over to our friends' house again so he can go over and see her - he's a neighbor and friend of our friends' oldest son, who just turned 12. Trout called him once to tell him about lightning striking right next to our car. That's the best they can do living 40 miles away from each other and lacking their own cell phones.
Otherwise I might worry. As a friend who knew me back then once said, "Remember what you were like when you were 12?"
I remember. I'm not quite ready for this. But I gotta hand it to the kid, I was a pretty, um, forward girl and I might have been gutsy enough to send a note to a boy I was crushing on at 12, but I certainly didn't have the cojones to walk up to his parents and tell them. That takes some fortitude.
That night, as I passed by her room at bedtime, I peeked in her door and there she sat on her bed, brushing her hair.
Whoo boy. I'm really not ready for this.
I am both laughing at you and researching shotguns.
Posted by: Uncle Orca | July 21, 2011 at 08:50 PM
OMG, I can totally ralte to this! I always forget your oldest and my only are the same age!
Posted by: Mylifeasitis | July 21, 2011 at 10:42 PM